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WIRED Retail 2015 startup stage: delivery and payments

WIRED Retail is our annual exploration of the ever-changing world of commerce, featuring leading technologists, entrepreneurs and creatives innovating in sectors as diverse as robotics, virtual reality and the future of home delivery. For all our coverage from the event, head over to our WIRED Retail hub.

In a marble-pillared drawing room at the St Pancras Renaissance Hotel, 16 startups entered a pitch battle to convince three judges that they should be given the closing slot on WIRED Retail 2015's main stage.

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On the judging panel were Rowland Manthorpe, associate editor of WIRED, Bindi Karia, a startup expert, mentor and financier, and Cheyney Robinson, chief creative officer of Europe at IBM Interactive Experience. With a nine minute slot each, the retail businesses took the stage and made their pitches to a full room.

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"We want to connect customers to their transactions," said Alexander Kayser, co-founder of yReceipts, at WIRED Retail. yReciepts provides digital receipts to retailers with brick and mortar stores and "solve the challenge" of identifying who those customers are. And to identify them, Kayser says, you have to give them something.

Traditionally, customers have been rewarded with loyalty programmes -- which are expensive, and may not work for companies whose customers only visit stores once or twice a year. Instead, the companies yReceipts work with provide their customers with the convenience of a digital receipt.

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Kayser was keen to stress that their system works as well for merchants as it does consumers -- a company with 100 stores who each send 150 digital receipts a week, he says, could gather data on around 780,000 customers a year. This means companies can better target their marketing.

yReceipts are currently working with brands like Mothercare, Puma and LK Bennett, but hope to gain more clients in the coming year. "This is a huge opportunity to connect to customers," said Kayser.

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"Everything in this room has probably been through a shipping container," Charles Lee told the conference. "Around 90% of physical products get loaded into a shipping container at some point in their lives."

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Over a million shipping containers are booked every day, Lee says. And the average booking takes an average of 60 emails and 20 phone calls per box -- so for companies shipping just five boxes a week, this would involve 300 emails and 100 phone calls per week.

Kontainers looks to reduce this by introducing what they call a "marketplace for shipping". A process that traditionally takes hundreds of steps can, it says, be reduced to just 3 steps, with merchants providing information on where the box is being picked up, where it's being taken and the rate they're interested in. Kontainers then narrows the selection to a choice of 20.

The service is currently being used by companies shipping their goods around the world. "We make the world go around -- a lot faster," he said.

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Quiqup, said Danny Hawkins, are the "only company that can bring you a nice meal, a bottle of champagne and an almost forgotten anniversary present in an hour".

Quiqup are an on-demand delivery company founded during the "emergence of the on-demand economy". Initially operating as a simple HTML5 app with a seed list of just 200 users, Quiqup asked just two questions: what do you want and where do you want it?

It now has a team of scooters who drive across London delivering items within the hour. The company has a complex 'matching system', meaning drivers and consumers are matched depending on location as well as expertise. Hawkins said it was important that a driver doing an organic food shop for a customer "needs to know how to pick an avocado". Matching specialities like this, Hawkins says, provides Quiqup customers with an unprecedented level of service.

The company now operates as a "complex ecosystem" of drivers, vendors and customers. "We started off as 'what do you want and when do you want it?'," said Hawkins. "But now what we have is a highly accessible, and successful, ecosystem".

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"As a currency, Bitcoin is talked about a lot," said Pierre Noizat, co-founder and CEO of Paymium. "And as a payment network it's interesting. It's not competing against debit or credit cards, it's competing against cash because it's a form of electronic cash."

Paymium are an online exchange who help merchants accept Bitcoin payments. There are now 100,000 merchants accepting Bitcoin, and 10million users worldwide.

So why use Bitcoin? Noizat says there are a number of reasons. It's an "alternative to traditional currency in that it's completely decentralised", meaning there can be a wider diversity in monetary systems. It can also keep payment details private -- important for people who want to "evade data capture in the new digital economy". It can also be used as an investment or simply to buy items online. "Press coverage of Bitcoin is always negative," Noizat said. "But it's an economy that is constantly growing.

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The first time Miki Kuusi used Uber, he fell in love -- and then wonder whether it'd be possible to make a similar experience for eating food.

Wolt lets users pre-order their meal from their mobile, getting a notification when it's ready for pickup, delivery or even eating in without the hassle of a waiter taking the order and time wasting of waiting for it to be prepared. Consumers use it via a free app, and restaurants don't pay upfront either, with the startup earning its pay via payment charges. Kuusi called Wolt the "interface of how we eat out".

Wolt is already in use at 300 restaurants in Helsinki, and looking to expand to new markets.